History explorer: Life in the Victorian workhouse Walking up to the front entrance of what is now Weaver Hall Museum in Northwich, it isn’t hard to imagine how intimidating the building must have appeared to those men, women and children whose personal circumstances had forced them to seek shelter in what was possibly the most infamous of all 19th-century institutions: the workhouse. Northwich Workhouse was commissioned in 1839 at a cost of £4,530. The red-brick, two-storey entrance block open to visitors today would have been a new inmate’s first experience of workhouse life, with the porter’s room, boardroom (now the museum cafe), and receiving wards sited within. The main accommodation block – a three-storey building that has since been demolished – was placed at the rear of the site, while the school, kitchen, and dining-hall were placed in the central axial wing. “The workhouse in Northwich was the product of a new poor law, introduced in 1834,” says Dr Samantha Shave of Bournemouth University. Great hardship Ringing the changes
Primary History - Victorian Britain - Children at Work Rare glimpse of Victorian London's working class captured by street photographer John Thomson / Courtesy Dominic Winter Auctioneers 'Crawlers', one of a series of pictures of 19th century London by pioneering street photographer John Thomson. Ben Cavanna / Courtesy Dominic Winter The volume of Street Life in London containing 36 of John Thomson's photographs that will be sold at auction on Thursday. By Yuka Tachibana, Producer, NBC News A book of photographs depicting the grueling poverty lived by many residents of Victorian London is due to be auctioned on Thursday. "In or around 1877, photography was mainly about beautiful landscapes or portraits of the wealthy, but these images [photographer John] Thomson deliberately set out to take were those of the Victorian underclass," John Trevers of auctioneers Dominic Winter told NBC News. "This was a pioneering work of social documentation," he added. Scottish photographer John Thomson, a pioneer of street photography, captured images of London's working class in the 1870s. Update, 12.40 p.m.
Oliver Twist Summary Oliver Twist is the story of a young orphan, Oliver, and his attempts to stay good in a society that refuses to help. Oliver is born in a workhouse, to a mother not known to anyone in the town. She dies right after giving birth to him, and he is sent to the parochial orphanage, where he and the other orphans are treated terribly and fed very little. When he turns nine, he is sent to the workhouse, where again he and the others are treated badly and practically starved. The other boys, unable to stand their hunger any longer, decide to draw straws to choose who will have to go up and ask for more food. Oliver loses. Oliver walks towards London. Oliver is very happy with Mr. Oliver is forced to go on a house-breaking excursion with the intimidating Bill Sikes. Oliver slowly recovers, and is extremely happy and grateful to be with such kind and generous people, who in turn are ecstatic to find that Oliver is such a good-natured boy.
Queen Victoria and Victorians History explorer: Life in the Victorian workhouse "Dr Samantha Shave and Charlotte Hodgman visit Weaver Hall Museum in Cheshire, a former workhouse and place of last resort for the destitute…" (historyextra.com) From tartan to tippling: the A to Z of things two queens have in common "On Wednesday the Queen takes the mantle of Britain’s longest-serving monarch from her great-great grandmother Queen Victoria, and here we compare their reigns." (theguardian.com) Queen Victoria archive goes online - 22 April 2012 "Rarely seen documents chronicling the life and reign of Queen Victoria have been made public on a new website marking this year's Diamond Jubilee. The Royal Family released its archive of letters, journals, painting and photographs for the launch.
Victorian Workhouses - The Workhouse Before 1834, poor people were looked after by buying food and clothing from money collected from land owners and other wealthy people. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, ensured that no able-bodied person could get poor relief unless they went to live in special workhouses. The idea was that the poor were helped to support themselves. They had to work for their food and accommodation. Workhouses were where poor people who had no job or home lived. Also in the workhouses were orphaned (children without parents) and abandoned children, the physically and mentally sick, the disabled, the elderly and unmarried mothers. The Workhouse, Southwell, Nottinghamshire Workhouses were often very large and were feared by the poor and old. A workhouse provided: a place to live a place to work and earn money free medical care, food clothes free education for children and training for a job. The staff of a workhouse included: a Master a Matron a Medical Officer a Chaplain a porter a school-teacher
Children & Cotton - Learning Zone for Social Studies & Citizenship Pauper Apprentices & Half-timers In the 1790s, there were hundreds of child workers at New Lanark. David Dale built the village and he needed lots of workers for his new mills. At the same time, he knew of pauper children who had little chance in life. Mr Dale brought these children to live and work at New Lanark. They were called Pauper Apprentices. This practice of employing apprentices was very common in mills. This tells us about the living conditions of the pauper apprentices at New Lanark Child apprentices would usually work a period of probation and then they would be bound to the mill by signing or marking an X [if they couldn't write] on an apprentice indenture. In many mills in towns and cities, apprentices were treated very badly and were forced to live in terrible conditions. "We went to our work at 6 in the morning without anything at all to eat or fire to warm us. Half-timers were children who worked in the mills but also went to school.
Oliver Twist: Analysis of Major Characters Oliver Twist As the child hero of a melodramatic novel of social protest, Oliver Twist is meant to appeal more to our sentiments than to our literary sensibilities. On many levels, Oliver is not a believable character, because although he is raised in corrupt surroundings, his purity and virtue are absolute. Even if we might feel that Dickens’s social criticism would have been more effective if he had focused on a more complex poor character, like the Artful Dodger or Nancy, the audience for whom Dickens was writing might not have been receptive to such a portrayal. Nancy A major concern of Oliver Twist is the question of whether a bad environment can irrevocably poison someone’s character and soul. Nancy’s love for Sikes exemplifies the moral ambiguity of her character. Fagin Although Dickens denied that anti-Semitism had influenced his portrait of Fagin, the Jewish thief’s characterization does seem to owe much to ethnic stereotypes.